


Small Comforts

by ladyknightanka



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Exhaustion, Gen, Light Angst, Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Death, Mild Language, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Past Poverty, Past Starvation, Vague Dark Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:11:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknightanka/pseuds/ladyknightanka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They all have their small comforts, their distractions, their reasoning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Comforts

**Author's Note:**

> I caught up to Attack on Titan yesterday, and have been a bit obsessed with it for about a week, so I couldn't resist fathoming (some of) my headcanons into fanfiction. It's about a strange-ish topic, but I hope it's still an interesting read.
> 
> I took character name spellings from the SnK wiki, as well as some details not yet divulged in the anime regarding Sasha's past, so beware minor spoilers. Also, I was thinking of the latest anime arc as I was writing, but honestly, I have no specific timeline for this.

-

Small Comforts

-

They’re a mess when they return to the castle.

Long after the tense supper where the others are dismissed, Levi catches a glimpse of Eren, always a step behind him, through his peripheral vision. The bags beneath the boy’s eyes, blue and bruised, contrast starkly with the browning red blood marring his torn uniform.

He looks tired and dirty. The one Levi can handle; he’s infamous, by now, for the rings around his own eyes from never getting enough sleep, but he’s also intimate, _comfortable_ , with exhaustion, whereas Eren’s life, in the last few months, has gone to shit beyond the kid’s reckoning, too fast for him to do much more than hang on and hope to survive.

The _other_ , though – the _filthiness_ , the unseemly stains, the mud on his boots and the twigs in his hair – Levi doesn’t want to have to look at for a single second longer. He sees enough ugly crap outside the Walls to willingly subject himself to more _inside_.

“Go to bed, brat,” he says, in his usual ill-tempered deadpan.

Eren’s eyes widen, their depths a sickly, tainted-water green in the dim light of the setting sun, a foil for the poison emerald of his Titan form’s. “S-sir?”

“Go,” Levi says again, sharper now. He listens for the quick, dull thud of Eren’s boots on cobblestone. They make it ten steps before a thought occurs to him. “Wait,” he calls, and the thud silences itself immediately. He allows the moment to linger, not bothering to turn. Finally, he adds, “You can…look in on your classmates, if you’d like. But go straight to bed afterward. And for fuck’s sake, _clean yourself up_. You’re disgusting.”

“Sir!”

This time, Eren retreats in a run, and Levi lets the sound of him fade away. A new sound overwhelms it, a more poised fall of footsteps from a larger figure, and Levi withholds a sigh. Irvin.

Picking up his pace, he asks, “What do you want?”

Of course, with his _freakishly_ long legs, it takes Irvin no time at all to catch up to him. If he wanted to, Irvin could overtake Levi’s shorter strides completely, possibly overpower him in general. But his smile remains pleasant to the point of inanity.

“You did well,” he says.

Levi scoffs. “Don’t I always?”

“The recruits did well too,” he continues, as if Levi hadn’t spoken. His blue eyes flick downward to focus on the side of Levi’s face, but he refuses to return Irvin’s gaze, no matter the intensity of it. “ _Eren_ did very well.”

“If he hadn’t, I’d have gutted him where he stood. Even lazy brats can fear, _Sir_.”

His voice drips with both mockery and warning, but perhaps they’ve known each other too long, because Irvin merely laughs, looking mutedly fond. “Yes, I suppose so, but…you could afford them _some_ kindness, Levi. They’re brave, but still so young.”

_Wasn’t I?_ Levi doesn’t ask. “Tch, whatever. Don’t you have paperwork to sign, old man? Possibly a few dozen death certificates?”

Irvin sighs, but doesn’t hassle him further. “Try to sleep,” he says, and walks off.

Clenching his fingers into tight fists, Levi watches him go. They really _do_ know one another too well. Maybe that’s why, out of spite, he returns to his room just long enough to remove his gear and damaged clothes, then treks to the storage room, where all the cleaning supplies – _his_ cleaning supplies – are kept.

To hold a bucket of sopping, soapy water in his hands is almost as familiar as the grip of his blades. When he’d first joined the Corps, despite hating himself for it, he’d entertained a rare naïve notion; he used to believe he wouldn’t have to live in squalor anymore – wouldn’t have to breathe in dust kicked up by the wheels of rich merchants’ wagons, wouldn’t have to eat insect-infected scraps of food scrounged from rubbish piles, wouldn’t have to sleep in shit and piss and vomit, wouldn’t have to drink _poison_ to abate the cramp in his starving stomach for just a little while longer.

Irvin had promised him better, and to be fair, he'd provided. The barracks and soldiers of the Scouting Legion are cleaner than Levi had grown accustomed to. However, they come with their own issues: tears and sweat and eventually blood. _So much blood_.

Although he probably shouldn’t be, Irvin is too lenient with him, even enabling, and so Levi’s fixation develops into obsession. Today, tonight, there’s plenty to distract him. Even the halls dotted with officers’ quarters are speckled here and there with blood and dirt. Hanji alone leaves devastation worthy of a cyclone in her wake. He cleans intently, working himself more and more, lower and lower, relishing in the ache that builds within his bones.

Outside the gargantuan double-doors that lead into the kitchen, he decides he won’t clean the barracks, at least for a little while. So many had died on the mission. The living, he knows, are fatigued beyond measure, body and soul. He’d have to be a huge asshole to scare the kids by intruding on them now, when already they must be suffering nightmares. He’s not _that_ much of a jerk.

Besides, the kitchens need the most attention, anyway. His _food_ gets prepared there, and even though the staff provides some of the shittiest slime he’s ever had recourse to swallow, it’s still a meal three times a day, and no one puts rat poison in it (probably). If he sanitizes every nook and cranny every couple of days, there’s no need to lose his appetite over it, either.

And so he wanders in, a surgical mask strapped to his face, the half-empty bucket of water dangling from his stiff but satisfied fingers, only to freeze at the sound of rustling cloth, and see the top of a dark mop of hair disappear under a wooden table.

He sets the bucket down slowly and stares, eyes half-lidded in their seemingly apathetic way. The mop of hair bobs. He hears someone swallow, rough and thick, as if around a morsel of food.

“You either stand up yourself,” he drawls, expressionless, “or I _make_ you do it.”

“Eeep!”

A vaguely familiar girl rises, reddish-brown hair swept into a messy ponytail, her hazel eyes brimming, at once, with hope and fear. She cradles a loaf of bread in both hands, and crumbs spot her quivering lips. _Food girl_ , his mind supplies.

“Braus,” he says.

“S-sir?”

“Do you want to explain to me what you’re doing, stealing food from our stores, after curfew?”

“Um, well, Lance Corporal Levi, I–” The growl of her stomach halts her stammering. She glances sheepishly between his impassive face and the loaf of bread. “I was, uh, still hungry, Sir.”

“I see,” replies Levi. He inspects her for a protracted instant, so long that she starts to fidget, then inquires, “Where are you from, Braus?”

“D-Dauper, Sir.”

_Dauper_. It had endured the food shortages in Wall Rose worse than most other areas, if possible, because its villagers preferred hunting to agriculture. Like him, like many of the impoverished, she had probably experienced true hunger – had probably watched loved ones die from it. Levi likes Irvin well enough, as much as he's capable of, but knows he isn't like them. Few officers are.

“Well, Braus–” With a deft kick that keeps it from toppling, he slides the bucket of soap-water over to her. It collides against a leg of her table and stills. “–when you’re done with that, you can help me clean. This place is a fucking pigsty.”

Eyes huge, she salutes him, crushing the bread to her chest. “Sir, yes, Sir!”

Below the mask, his mouth twitches, but whether it's a grimace or a smile, she'll never know. No one will. They get to work.

 

-

End

-

**Author's Note:**

> This particular fic was born because, while Levi's obsessive cleanliness and Sasha's obsessive eating can be funny, I kept thinking that they each had their reasons for it, you know? And the series is so tragic that those reasons were most likely sad. So, yes, I basically took what light broke through the darkness and twisted it into more darkness. Um. Sorry.


End file.
